But thats deaths. What was also glaringly absent from Top Gears rant was the number of non fatal or non injury accidents. For example when someone goes skating off the road at a tight bend but there's no injury save a wrecked car.
If you're not intelligent enough to adjust your driving according to the conditions then there's no hope for you and certainly no point whatsoever even discussing it further !
You're response is totally irrelevent.
Andy Pandy To e-mail, address hopefully, self-explanatory !
Actually he has a point. Just because it's dark and there's nobody else on the road doesn't mean that Farmer Giles isn't going to drive his tractor out of his field and onto the road without looking. In fact it makes it more likely in my opinion. Of course, Farmer Giles would say this wasn't dangerous, because there's so little traffic on the road at that time he doesn't need to drive sensibly. Yes, it's perfectly safe to drive fast, until something unexpected happens.
And don't say it won't heppen, because I know 2 people it has happened to (1 hit a tractor, the other a lorry). They had both "adjusted their driving according to the conditions", and both were lucky not to pay with their lives or those of anyone else.
All IMHO.
Robert
But these were rising continuously, and deaths falling continuously, for many years before anyone thought up speed cameras.
Of course there will ALWAYS be accidents ! The only way to avoid them is not to go out. You always have to balance risk against benefit ( which critics always fail to do ! ) There is obviously less chance of hitting something when traffic is less dense. My real point is why don't the authorities use technology to aid us rather than penalise us and then limits could be even lower at high risk sites during period of particularly high risk like school turn out time, rather than what has to be a compromise !
Andy Pandy To e-mail, address hopefully, self-explanatory !
Exactly, authorities should work with the road users to find solutions to the problems.. Not keep adding more and more restrictive laws that people are most likely going to break anyway becasue they are too restrictive and heavier fines to try and deter people breaking those laws..
Roads need to be made to cope with the traffic load and bypasses needed to reduce traffic through village centres where there are more pedestrians..
Instead we get speed bumps and various other "traffic calming" measures, congestion charges and bus lanes.. The push to make us use public transport by taxing us more basically taking away our freedon to choose out own mode of transport..
I Thought they had up top 6 months for mobiles cameras. The fixed Gatso's etc are 14 days though.
Well yes. But I get a bit concerned by people who seem to have a blase attitude of "it's OK to go at ridiclous speeds when I belive it to be safe". The point is both my mates would probably have avoided collision if they had been travelling at sensible speeds.
This might be true, but accidents in dense traffic tend to be minor "shunts" due to the lower speeds involved, and not major accidents involving loss of limbs and life.
Because it would cost an absolute fortune to install variable speed limits on every road in the country. You have to draw the line somewhere, and IMHO 60 on a single track road is about right. I do believe however that motorway speed limits should be raised to 80 or 85.
Robert
Gosh. Travelling somewhere costs money.
Boo hoo.
I am not worried that traveling costs money, its that it keeps costing MORE money and all that money seems to make no difference to the quality of the roads in terms of handling congestion..
You may like sitting in the car for hours listening to the radio while moving at 1mph.. Personally I prefer to be moving a little faster than that.. Especially when I am PAYING for it..
Later..
I was thinking about making a considered and eloquent response to this, but why bother when the word "bollox" will do?
Very reasonable.
Possible scenario - you're setting up a camera on a bridge, your specs fall off (or an angry passer by smacks you on the back of the head) and your specs get broken. I would expect my employer to pay for the replacement thereof. And my last spend on specs five years ago (use contact lenses now) was over 100 quid.
About right on a single track road? I know a lot of single track roads where you'd struggle to maintain anything above 45 / 50. I take it you actually mean single carriageway?
The vast majority of those being fined are not blase, travelling at ridiculous speed, or even bad drivers ! Speed cameras do nothing to take bad drivers off the road !
Most accidents are caused by inexperience and stupidity, rather than just speed !
Perhaps you have a point, though there is plenty of money spent on needless schemes.
I agree with that. :-)
Andy Pandy To e-mail, address hopefully, self-explanatory !
That's because more and more people are insisting on driving
No I hate it. Thing is it doesn't matter how you choose to travel. It costs money to travel and all methods can reuslt in unexpected delays.
Anyway, this is way OT.
Robert
A big influence in any road death/injury stats over the past decade has to be car safety. For argument's sake, compare a new Mondeo to an early
90's Sierra. Airbags, seat belt pretensioners, side impact beams, "anti-submarining" seats, engine mounts designed to push the engine under the passenger cell instead of back into it, standard ABS, stability management programmes, pedestrian impact test as part of homologation rules....you name it. All of these technologies must have played a part in reducing tens, if not hundreds of "fatal" road accidents into "injury" accidents, or injury accidents into "walk away" ones. Granted, you hit a tree at a ton and you're probably going to die, but it has never been safer to crash a car than it is now. And this, I think, has a lot to do with how people drive. In modern cars with all the aforementioned equipment/design features, people are driving more and more carelessly, vacationing in the land of "my car will get me out of trouble no matter what".This, combined with the government's almost obsessive targeting of speed (together with massaged statistics "supporting" this argument), and levels of traffic police at a lower level than I can remember in my 15 year driving career means that more and more people just don't give a toss when they're out driving. I would like to see statistics for:
a) Fatalities / serious injuries offset against the number of accidents. We know the former has stood still, but I suspect the latter has soared. This would kill the argument for speed cameras stone dead.
b) The prosecution figures for drink driving, driving without due care and attention, driving untaxed, uninsured and without MOT over the past
10 years (I suspect these have plummeted)c) Accidents / deaths attributed to poor road surface conditions. This would be especially interesting if it included motorcyclists (as one myself, I know just how lethal our third world road surfaces can be)
I suspect that speed cameras have done even less than Top Gear's research illustrated. Yes, we have similar death figures, but I bet accident numbers are at record highs. It will get worse too. Apparently, those areas participating in the Safety Camera Partnership who get to keep a portion of the revenue for road safety improvements will soon have this taken into account when their budgets are set. This means forces will literally start to depend on camera revenue for their very survival (if they don't already). Surely the two aims of maximising camera revenue and confining cameras to accident blackspots are about as contradictory as it is possible to get.
IMHO, we need:
More traffic police. Cameras confined to proven accident blackspots within town/city limits. Road surfaces brought up to scratch. No speed limits on motorways.
20 mph speed limits in town centres (with blanket camera coverage in residential areas, and within 300 yards of any school, hospital or old people's home.Dan
Thats where the police on the road come in, the spot the dangerous drivers/cars, and can excercise discretion, cameras cant.
I was recently traveling down a piece of 30mph duel carrige way relativly late at night, perhaps about 38-40mph very light traffic, i pulled into a side street and was going to nip to the shop, a car pulled up behind me (dk blue/black volvo estate - sheffield area) a copper got out and called me over, basically watch your speed, didnt seem to arsed was more bothered about getting his sandwich from the shop, had a brief chat about the rugby, he did his pnc check and we both got on our way.
He mentioned that they was looking for the boy racers and the general bad drivers...
He excersised his descretion and wall all together a jolly nice chap! had i passed a camera it would have been a ticket no probs.....
Big up the sheffs copper in the Volvo!
As if to illustrate your point, my grandfather was recently caught on camera doing 47 in a 40. Straight dual carriageway, 8:00 in the evening, dry road. A copper would have probably given a flash of the lights, or a ticking off.
He is not a habitual speeder (like most people in their early 70's. He drives a non-turbo Peugeot 405 Diesel. He's now got 3 points on his licence for the first time in his life.
Infuriating!
Dan
I agree to a certain extent. Unfortunatelych people don't think about the poor bugger they crash into at a converging speed approaching 200 mph. Also, don't forget the boy racer who is too dumb to realise even that the car is more than a toy to impress the local slappers with.
[snip]It will have, but not necassarily by te same proportion as the increase in drivers/cars/driven miles.
No, it would bolster it.
I suspect the latter has increased due to increased tax and insurance costs.
I wouldn't say they are third world. Haven't seen many major roads consisting of dirt tracks int his country recently. If you don't think the road is up to scratch, you shouldn't be riding your motorbike so damn fast!
I love Top Gear, but that wasn't even the beginnings of research.
[snip]What about accident blackspots in the countryside? Far more RTA's are fatal out of town than in because of the higher speeds...
No way. 30 is fine for most situations (ie where there are designeted crossing places for pedestrians etc etc.
(with blanket camera
But aren't you arguing for a reduction in camera use?!
Robert
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